One of the Herd of Elephants in the Room Steps Forward

This pandemic has been a particularly harsh to elders, those with serious pre-existing conditions, and those – usually hovering above destitution – forced to work, shoulder-to-shoulder or live in crowded barracks. Healthcare workers are often deprived of basic PPE, working under impossible conditions in severely overcrowded hospitals. Overwhelmed. But what has made a terrible situation so much worse is the dramatic polarization of just about every aspect of this COVID-19 outbreak.

Over 150,000 Americans dead, California and a disproportionate number of red states with “reopen, reopen, reopen” pressures from Trump populists who believe for some inexplicable reason that the economy can be restored before the election if only Americans ignore the virus and just plain return to work… are pushing infection rates through the roof. And it is still considered a leftist acknowledgement to wear a mask and avoid crowds. Not a medical necessity.

But what is increasingly apparent is the out-and-out political hostility in Trumpist populism against parents needing to care for children. If the pandemic is “exaggerated,” as conspiracy theorist insist, then holding kids out of school simply has to be wrong. A radical leftist plot to keep Trump down. Obviously, this creates a pressure to reopen public schools for in-person learning.

This of course is also overwhelmingly a slam to working women. When the pressure to open schools accelerated, Trump was explaining the dramatic damage to children, some struggling with online learning with others losing valuable social skills that come with classroom learning and school sports. Some truth there. Then the trickle of the real “why”: to get enough people into the workforce to restore the economy – Trump’s once strong economy “trump” card – parents who needed to leave home to work required “schools as childcare alternatives.” Desperate and facing losing a job if they refused to work, many were even willing to take the risk that their kids just might bring the virus home with them.

In considering whether or not to continue the expiring $600/week in federal support for unemployment benefits during the pandemic, there is a coterie of Congressional Republicans who believe that unless those benefits are seriously reduced, such payments would hold back too many workers from going back to their jobs. Parents who have no other way to support their families would thus be forced to overlook the obvious COVID-19 risks, go back to their jobs (even in risky environments and place where the outbreaks continue to soar) and place their children back into classes.

That teachers’ unions are suing gubernatorial “open school” mandates, that schools are mostly unfunded to handle the unique issues of education during a pandemic, seem irrelevant. Even GOP leaders who acknowledge the recent surge see only a postponement of “a few weeks” before public schools begin a semblance of normalcy… well before the November election. Death and horrible suffering from this virus are simply the price Americans have to pay to get their economy back. And younger people, already resentful of restrictions they feel are aimed only at protecting elders and who believe that they are strong enough easily to fight off the disease if they get it, join that “reopen” chorus.

Sam Dean, writing for the July 26th Los Angeles Times, addresses the pressure on corporate America to fill in where government tax credits and minimal real childcare commitments have failed: “Parents who could work from home struggled to stay productive while keeping toddlers entertained and teens focused on remote schoolwork. Those deemed essential workers somehow had to find someone to watch their kids while they spent their days in newly dangerous workplaces.

“We just have to make it through the lockdown, they told each other. Then: We just have to make it through the summer… Forced to adapt to this new normal, California’s biggest employers responded, in varying degrees, with measures such as paid leave for caregivers, flexible work schedules and stipends for childcare. But now that the L.A. Unified School District and many others across the state are barred from opening for in-person classes in the fall, many of those employers are still relying on emergency policies intended as stopgap measures, while some are cutting back on new child-care benefits…

“Many state- and employer-provided benefits are slated to expire over the summer, even though child-care needs have not changed… Nationally, fewer than half the U.S. companies that have returned to in-person work have a plan for employees with child-care responsibilities, and only 32% of companies that have announced a set date for returning to work have come up with a plan, according to recent research from the Society for Human Resource Management .

“But employers may be forced to figure something out soon, as the reality of rising cases and remote schooling sets in for working parents across the country, said Rachael McCann, a senior director at the human resources consulting firm Willis Towers Watson… ‘The changes we’ve all seen have led to shock, dismay and anger, but I think companies are about to move into acceptance,’ McCann said. ‘We actually have to be dealing with this for the next 12 months; there’s no more denying that a pandemic is here.’

“Research from Willis Towers Watson found that before March, companies were offering some parental support, but it varied widely from sector to sector. Financial services companies were the most likely to offer child-care benefits and led the pack in subsidizing employees who paid for off-site child care, while healthcare companies were the most likely to offer on-site subsidized child care.

“Back then, these kinds of child-care services were ‘a nice-to-have, but utilization was incredibly low — employees often didn’t even know they had it,’ McCann said… Six months into the pandemic, McCann said, priorities have changed: ‘It’s shifted from being viewed as a perk to being a critical need.’

“That need has been clear for healthcare workers and companies since the pandemic struck. Three of L.A.’s top 10 private-sector employers are healthcare companies, with more than 70,000 workers between them, and the essential workforce includes a higher proportion of parents and more women, who are often stuck shouldering child-care responsibilities, than the working population as a whole.”

We hear right-wing Trumpists excoriate Europe’s blatant “socialism” – conflating “socialism,” where government owns the means of production, with “social programs” where government administers social benefits like public education and Social Security – touting the superiority of American free market capitalism. Even though the tax code and ability to access capital are horrifically skewed to favor the rich with government bailouts of failing automakers and “too big to fail” financial institutions. Hardly a “free market.”

We laugh at Germany, with a fully functioning universal healthcare system (based on a percentage of individual earnings) that covers all medical, dental, hearing loss and vision care with superb results. We accept that nasty six figure average undergraduate tuition cost here, with crushing student debt, where a comparable college education in Germany is close to free. We look to indirect “tax” credits to fix our really serious childcare issues, when so many of those working women don’t make enough for such tax incentives to matter. Germany has true and direct childcare, earnings safety nets, and retirement programs that put our Social Security to shame. Medical bankruptcy is unknown there.

You can skip through much of the rest of Europe with similar results. Why are we laughing? Why do so many women vote against their own self-interest in this country? Is our failing educational system simply producing an increased flow of undereducated and thus ignorant voters?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and Donald Trump is completely dependent on a large coterie of voters quite ready to vote against their own best interests in support of conspiracy theories and assumptions-contrary-to-facts who simply are unwilling to look at the President for who he really is.